🚀 go-pugleaf

 You said it yourself. Software piracy is a problem when users pirate
software INSTEAD of buying it. But how often is this really the case?
Remember, we're talking lost sales here. You can go on and on all you
want about the morality of it, but a software company does not lose ONE
CENT when someone pirates something they wouldn't have otherwise bought.
(That's why companies aren't terribly reluctant to give out demo
copies... Because the users wouldn't have actually bought it if they had
to pay for it.)

 Given that, the question is, "How many sales will be lost due to
piracy?" This depends a lot on the product, of course (games are
infinitely more vulnerable to piracy than anything else). But for most
business products, the lost sales are negligible. Companies can get in
some real deep crap if caught with pirated software, and very few
companies are willing to risk that.

 As a classic example, Banyan Vines comes with a dongle. Brilliant.
Yeah, like a company with the bucks to set up a local area network with
a dedicated server really cares about those three thousand dollars for a
legit copy of Vines.

							Nick